The present invention pertains to seat supporting assemblies which provide resilient support for seats used in recreational vehicles, motorcycles, and the like.
Some prior art vehicles have provided resilient means for supporting the seat by mounting the seat on the rearward end of a cantilevered, generally horizontally extending bracket, and the forward end of the bracket is pivotally mounted to the vehicle frame and the bracket is supported intermediate its length by a vertically extending coil spring assembly which serves to provide resilient support for the seat; in that arrangement, however, since the seat is pivotable about a pivot point located in front of the seat, during vertical oscillation of the seat, the rear portion of the seat will have greater vertical movement than the forward part of the seat. This drawback is accentuated in the event that the seat is sufficiently long to comfortably support two riders. If the seat is supported such that the forward portion of the seat has a sufficient vertical movement to provide a comfortable ride for the driver, the rear portion will have an undesirable amplitude of movement.
In still other prior devices, there is no convenient means to effectively adjust the resiliency of the springs supporting the seat. Some prior seats provide auxiliary supporting devices which can be added to support the seat but these devices are not adjustable to compensate for any variations in the weight of riders and passengers, and they are usually not conveniently added or removed.
The present invention is in the nature of an improvement over my U.S. Pat. No. 4,029,284 which issued June 14, 1977 and entitled "Seat Support Assembly for Recreational Vehicle", which patent has been assigned to an assignee common with the present application. In that patent, a forwardly located spring loaded cylindrical strut was used between the forward end of the seat and the vehicle frame and this strut was of considerable size in that it was used to carry some of the weight imposed on the vehicle seat. The present invention eliminates the need of this cylindrical spring strut so as to enhance the compactness of the seating arrangement, reduce the cost and furthermore results in an unobstructed area adjacent the front end of the seat.